One of the many uses of fluorite is its use as raw material for the production of fluorhydric acid. Previously, there has been no general effort to avoid atmospheric pollution nor governmental regulations tending to prevent such atmospheric pollution through suitable measures. Fluorite, irrespectively of its quality was indiscriminately used for said purpose of producing fluorhydric acid. Nevertheless, more recently there has been a recognition of the need to prevent atmospheric pollution, rather than combating it after it is produced, and in many countries there are already regulations regarding the prevention of atmospheric pollution, which include the prohibition of the use of industrial processes, in which by any circumstance, atmospheric pollution could be produced. Many producers of fluorite of the quality found in the deposits of various countries, (which has the problem of containing as one of its generally present impurities, pyrites of the type known as arsenical pyrites), are facing more frequently the return of their fluorite concentrates by the producers of fluorhydric acid, because in most of the procedures for the production of said fluorhydric acid, the arsenic present in the arsenical pyrites associated with the fluorite is evolved as gas that necessarily goes to the atmosphere, therefore polluting it. Thus many producers of fluorite ore concentrates are at the present time searching for a procedure that permits the elimination of the arsenic present in fluorite ore, when it contains arsenical pyrites. In consequence, it is an important purpose of the present invention to provide a procedure for the separation of arsenic from fluorite ore containing arsenical pyrites, by means of a fast and economic separation of those arsenical pyrites from fluorite ore, in order that, with that separation, the separation of arsenic present on said pyrites is obtained automatically.
Other objects or purposes of this invention will be clear to those skilled in the art, from the following description of this invention.